A Girl's Point of Brew

The Kitchn proposes these beers as most likely to contain something for anybody at a party:

by Holly

I just finished Skyping with Abbey Ale. I miss her sooo much.

We had beers, of course, and I had this one that described itself thusly:

I’ve been raised by a wide variety of people who taught me to appreciate a wide variety of art, but I proclaim: if I experience your art/beer for less time than it takes me to read your artist’s/brewer’s statement about what on earth your art/beer means, then the product is worthless. Art With a Capital “A” should transcend language. (I know I have at least one reader with a degree from an art college. Feel free to defend your peers if you feel so moved. You can also just call me a hayseed from northeast Mississippi, but that will only dissolve into my claiming that it’s the pot calling the kettle very pedestrian and not at all a statement about poor women’s tools. Or, alternately, the pot calling the kettle some term that further highlights the inherent racism, classism, and sexism underlying most of modern language. You get my point. You could have been finished with this paragraph 40 seconds ago.)

This is why I write about beer within the context that I experienced it. Yep, there were existential oak, cranberry, and jasmine notes, and I get that there was a hell of a lot of thinking and trouble that went into the product. But but the beer’s process of creation wasn’t half as memorable to me as drinking beer with Abbey Ale via Skype. Abbey Ale, by the way, reports being somewhat won over by the last paragraph, so I’ll chime in. Down with soulless corporate apathy, absolutely. But perhaps, up with a wider view of beer and its role in the world.

by Holly

I have drunk a beer that costs $3 for a 6-pack of 12 ounce cans. That’s less than a nickel per ounce, and as a comparison, Budweiser runs a shade over a dime an ounce. Class. Eee.

Hermione Hefeweizen and Irving IPA invited me out for Mediterranean food and then over to their house. Post falafel (“Mediterranean hush puppies,” Hermione declared), they realized that they were out of beer at home. The only gettin’ place between the restaurant and their place is a Walgreens.

Your Walgreens may not sell beer at all. It probably operates under the assumption that if you come in for prescription medication, acetaminophen, or a heated argument with the pharmacy tech about how many packages of Sudafed you bought in the last month*, you probably need plenty of clear fluids and nothing that further damages your liver. But lots of Walgreens stores want to give you an opportunity to buy beer and cheap wine, healthy choices be damned.

The Walgreens beer selection is limited, but it includes what appears to be Walgreens’ house brand, Big Flats. This Walgreens had already sold out of its cold Big Flats for the evening. Of the three people standing in the check-out line, we had four tepid Big Flats 6-packs among us. Popular stuff!

(“Shouldn’t that wheel be connected to something, like a mill, and not just rolling free down the river?” asks Irving IPA.)

After the cans spent some time in the freezer, Hermione and Irving took big swigs of their Big Flats. They swiftly and simultaneously had the same reaction: “This is lake beer!” Irving’s family has a lovely cabin at Pickwick, the lake that, along with dirt-cheap hydroelectric power, resulted from the New Deal-era damming of the Tennessee River. Irving and Hermione have spent many happy weekends marinating in summer lake water with cans of low-ABV suds floating nearby in foam koozies.

I wish I could report such a warm reaction. Big Flats isn’t a bad beer, but it’s about as flavorful as an unsalted cracker. I don’t think I’ll ask for it again unless I encounter mitigating circumstances, like the possibility of drifting beside a party barge parked at a sandbar in July.

;

*If you are that guy, get thee to rehab. Or an allergist, depending.

by Holly

Saturday I “toured” the Independence Brewery with a handful of my fellow professional do-gooders. Top 5 day, no doubt about it.

The reason why it was a top 5 day needs some explanation.

I confess: I started writing this blog while I was unemployed. The day I both signed up for unemployment benefits and started a beer blog—even though I had been planning for both for months—felt like a manifestation of an embarrassing stereotype of millenium middle-class life. But here I am, three weeks into a satisfying gig, and still writing about beer and the people around me who enjoy it. Life is pretty great for me most of the time.

When I moved to Austin, I joined a Meetup of social workers. I freaking love social workers. Social workers do hard, valuable work.  You probably guessed that.  But we also tend to have messed-up, dark senses of humor. I tell stories and jokes with my colleagues that hinge on suicide threats, depravity, addiction, and other dark matter—as punch lines! It clearly depresses the hell out of everyone else. Life can be terrible, and a social worker will help you figure out how to access your resources and strengths to move in a generally less terrible direction. But a person can’t daily fight abuse, murder, and overwhelming poverty without being able to laugh in its face. Thus our cripplingly twisted jokes.

Anyway. I freaking love social workers. This Meetup has, in addition to introducing me to some fantastic colleagues, introduced me to some really wonderful eating and drinking establishments in Austin. We’ve had happy hour at Abel’s on the Lake, an open air joint that sits right on Lake Travis. We’ve eaten at East Side Kings, a food trailer that originated from Paul Qui, the most recent winner of Top Chef. But Saturday we met at Independence Brewery for their monthly community tour.

Tour is the wrong word for this event. It’s a two-hour beer festival in Independence’s parking lot. Buy a pint glass for $6, get it filled three times with some locally brewed craft beer. Families were their with their babies and dogs. People from my Mississippi hometown were there. A band was there. It was one of the most wonderful afternoons of my life to date.

Beer.  Social workers.  The combination is unbeatable.

I’m a fan of the Independence Bootlegger Brown. It’s definitely in the running for my  drink anytime beer. Browns in general are a lovely creation: not so dark as to scare off the stout-leery, but malty enough to wrap your tongue up in a perfect beer envelope. The the Bootlegger Brown is a fine example. I hope the next time I drink it, its environs are half as satisfying as drinking it in its own backyard.

by Holly

I stated earlier that I’m a total fool for Abita Purple Haze, a wheat beer with a substantial raspberry component brewed in Louisiana. Something has happened to make me doubt my total foolery.

Last weekend the Louisiana people–who will hereafter be referred to by their full names, Amelia Altbier, and her husband who knows very specifically what he likes, Chris Corona–invited me over for game night. Amelia had rolled her own mixed six pack of beer and cider. She offered me a bottle of Colorado’s Great Divide Wild Raspberry Ale, and two sips in or so I announced that it might be a better beer than Purple Haze, to my and everyone else’s surprise.

I was a little shocked and appalled at myself, so I determined a multi-participant heads-up comparison was in order. Surely I was wrong.

So last night my sister and brother-in-law–who will hereafter be referred to by their full names, Hermione Hefeweizen and Irving IPA–invited Amelia, Chris, me, and my date my over for an Oscar party. I foisted raspberry brews on everyone. My date, Abita Purple Haze’s staunch defender, refused to entertain the possibility that there might be a superior raspberry beer and therefore offered to manage the pouring and the tasting rather than participate directly. Everyone got 6 ounces of each beer.

I’m embarrassed to report that the Great Divide Wild Raspberry Ale was preferred by 4 out of 5 of us. The wheat component in the Purple Haze is much stronger when you put it in direct comparison to the Great Divide, and it goes a little weird in your mouth. Irving IPA even said, “This smells like wet cat.” I feel strange about the outcome.

To Amelia Altbier’s Louisiana credit, she was the holdout for the Abita.

It should probably be noted that these beers did not appeal to Hermione Hefeweizen in the slightest. She made this face again:

I’m not sure how to proceed. Even with this direct comparison, I’m pretty sure I’d always choose the Purple Haze in an obstinate act of southern pride. That’s probably the definition of being a total fool for something, choosing it over something your brain, in a blind comparison, prefers.

by Holly

Abbey Ale can attest:  tiny things please me.  I am the bringer of tiny pies to parties.  I have a piece or two of miniature mid-century modern furniture.  Those tiny Le Creuset casseroles make my mouth water.  I really love things with lots of tiny drawers and compartments, like fishing tackle boxes, tool chests, and dentist cabinets.

My love for tiny things stems from my small stature.  Petite, short stack, hobbit-like…these terms all apply.  When I’m holding  a demitasse cup, it’s not that my brain says, “I’M A GIANT WITH THIS TINY COFFEE CUP!” but I do feel a more confident and able to manipulate the world around me.

Last week I had five beers in tiny glasses, and I may never go back to full pints.

I had Valentine’s Tex-Mex at Chuy’s, along with a 12 oz. Negra Modelo.  It arrived with a wee little glass, which my server claimed was “traditional.”

A cursory Google didn’t yield any verification for this, but I neither disbelieve nor disagree with the practice.  The lime on the glass was never very far away from my nose, giving the beer a nice lime aroma without having to stuff it into the bottle.

Later in the week I stopped by Blackstar Co-op Brewery–fully deserving of a massive post about its operations and product–and ordered a flight of their brews, which was presented in four 4 ounce glasses, all in a lovely little row.

Aside from making someone feel dashing and tall, small glasses also force a drinker to slow down and mindfully consider her beverage.  Mindful consumption requires a person to pay better attention to the details of a brew, and that improves even the worst swill.  It’s part of what’s enjoyable about writing this blog.  If I’m going to tell all of you about an experience later, I can’t speed through a meal and drink without enjoying the event as much as possible.

My professional do-gooder self can’t help but leave you with a link about mindful eating.  It may well strike you as excessively hippy-dippy, but we can all use the occasional reminder to pay attention.

If I weren’t so certain of its grating quirkiness, I’d totally carry a tiny beer glass in my purse to whip out at bars.

by Holly

Not this chick.

by Holly

A quick link here to a Serious Eats post about pairing beer and chocolate!  Can’t think of a better way to improve Valentine’s Day.

by Holly

About 97% of the time, I’m a pescatarian–a vegetarian who also eats fish.  When I get a compelling urge to eat beef, pork, or poultry, I usually indulge it.  But that only happens once every few months, often when I’m in a social situation where it would be far more detrimental to world progress to refuse meat than to eat it.  Like when an old family friend invites one over for brisket, or a waiter accidentally brings dry rub ribs instead of a grilled cheese sandwich.  What barbarian wouldn’t eat meat in those instances?

This is all to say that there is a very good chance that my taste buds have a weird bias, and the following statement might seem outright silly to you.

Many dark beers, Guinness in particular, have a tinge of bacon to me.  I had a Southern Star Smoked ProAm Porter on Wednesday at the Drafthouse. The Drafthouse listed it as a “Badass Draft.”  If other dark beers hint at bacon, then this badass put up a bacon billboard on I-35.

I fell hard for the Stone Smoked Porter because it evoked romance.  The Southern Star ProAm Smoked Porter just induced a carnivorous thrill.  Maybe it’s just its “badass” recommendation, but it felt like a raw, uncivilized variation of smoked porter, whereas the Stone Brewery version felt like a lovely night in a state park.  A surprise escape from civility contained in a pint glass seems like magic to me.  Bacon magic.